XRP tumbled below the $1 threshold for the first time since 2024, a psychologically significant drop that came even as Ripple secured a new institutional partner in South Korea, where a regional bank agreed to adopt its cross-border payments service.
Price Breaks a Key Level
The token's slide beneath $1 marks a notable reversal for XRP, which had spent much of the prior period trading comfortably above the mark. The breach of the round-number level is often watched closely by traders as a barometer of sentiment, and its loss signals renewed pressure on one of the market's most heavily traded assets.
The decline underscores a disconnect that has long shadowed Ripple: real-world adoption of its enterprise products does not always translate into upward momentum for the XRP token itself.
Institutional wins on paper have yet to put a floor under XRP's sliding price.
Korean Bank Signs On
The price drop unfolded against the backdrop of fresh news that Jeonbuk Bank, a regional lender in South Korea, plans to use Ripple's around-the-clock cross-border payment service to handle business remittances. The arrangement gives Ripple another foothold in the Asian banking sector.
A key uncertainty, however, is which asset will actually settle those transactions. It remains unclear whether the remittance flows will be routed through XRP or Ripple's dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD.
- Jeonbuk Bank will tap Ripple's 24/7 payments network for business remittances.
- The service targets faster, always-on cross-border settlement.
- Whether flows use XRP or RLUSD has not been disclosed.
That ambiguity matters for XRP holders, since only transactions that rely on the token would generate the kind of on-chain demand bulls point to as a catalyst. With Ripple increasingly promoting RLUSD for institutional use, the token's role in new deals has become harder to pin down, adding to the caution reflected in the latest price action.